Fjordman

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Goodbye and Merry Christmas from Fjordman

Fjordman will now close this blog. It will still be possible to post comments at this blog for another couple of weeks, but from early January 2006, there will be no more activity here. The old posts will still be here for reference, of course. For the most part, Fjordman will be quiet. However, I will still occasionally post comments at LittleGreenFotballs or Jihad Watch. Every now and then, when I have the time and want to write about some topic, this will be posted at other blogs such as the Gates of Vienna, and offered to Faith Freedom International and the Brussels Journal.

Muhammed was a brilliant intuitive leader/general, and he and his companions devised a near perfect closed system of war aginst the rest of humanity. Only by showing that Allah is not infallible can we be victorious in keeping our freedom, our life, our liberty and pursuit of our happiness. Muslims are extremely childish in their view of themselves and the world - they are superstitious and thus afraid of dogs, of the Koran getting dirty etc. They continually tell us the truth about their paranoia, and their intentions. Therefore, one of the best tactics for us to take in the War on Terror is to mock them and exploit their childishness, so that they will expose themselves to everyone.

The Judeo-Christian, Western culture is based on guilt, and Muslims exploit this by playing on our guilt complex. The Arab-Islamic culture is based on shame. It's time we learn to play on their shame, just as they do on our guilt. They feel humiliated and paranoid about everything. In defense of their egos and by extention their religion they do stupid things, such as the London bombings and sharing the beheading videos with the rest of the world. While these tactics are successful in terrorizing people, they also alert Western people and other infidels that Islam may not be the "religion of peace and tolerance" that it claims to be.

There are a few issues central and vital to Islam and on which it is really vulnerable on, such as women's emancipation. If Islam really does go for it, Islam is dead. If it doesnt then its dead in the long run. The most important and valuable soldiers of Islam are not male Jihadis, but women. Muslim women are the frontline soldiers of Islam in the West, as they were in Bosnia. However, women are also the Achilles heel of Islam. Give young Muslim girls in the West, the legal power that they do not have to follow the dictats of the imams or the mullahs, or give them the notion that they can report mullahs for religious harassment, then one starts a chain reaction that continues into the home and community. The French ban on hijabs in schools is the right first step.

The Jihadis have a clear moral purpose, and we have to need to define an even more powerful moral argument as to why our cause is more just, more moral and better - not just to our public, whose unwavering support we need, but to many Muslims around the world. Once we have such a clear moral purpose, then indeed we can go to full scale war, if that is needed. What is the magic formula that will mobilise us, give us a clear moral superiority that will sustain us through thick and thin?

It should be done by giving Islam its proper name: Slavery and apartheid. Women are the slaves in the cult of Islam (submission = slavery). One peculiar thing about male supremacy or any form of slavery, is that it enslaves both parties. Muslim men should realise, that the emancipation of women also emancipates and frees men. This has been the lesson in the West. And so it has continued. Thus Muslim men should not be frightened in letting go - they will also be freeing themselves from the chains of islam. This inevitably leads us to ask, can we somehow re-define Islam, in particular for a Western audience, not as a religion but as a political ideology, and one whose tenets are sufficiently evil, so that it merits destruction, much as Nazism. This construct has to take place so that the Western populace sees it as justifiable to actually give the physical and moral support that is required for such a large undertaking. In passing it is worth noting the political difficulty that Bush and Blair are having in Iraq in sustaining political support for the war, once they had proclaimed that Islam is a RoP - they had conceded the moral ground.

Islam is institutionalised slavery, and the Jihad's main purpose is to garner slaves, both men and women, from the lands of the Free. Muslims, both men and women, then become the first slaves of Islam. Two points come to mind immediately. 1. The institution of slavery crushes the spirit of slaves. They were unable to think for themselves as a consequence. A striking feature of Islamic societies. 2. Runaway slaves used to be beaten, and oft executed, as a lesson to other would be runaway slaves. The same punishment is Islamically sanctioned for the Muslim apostate.

Many practices of the rituals of Islam are completely out of variance with what is tolerable in the West. I hope that in Europe, we adopt fairly stringent rules on where one can wear the hijab. Certainly in these days of video surveillance, the wearing of the hijab or burqa, can be seen as trying to circumvent a public safety requirement. Schools, universities, airports and government offices must be declared places where one is not allowed to smoke (on grounds of personal safety) or wear the burqa (on grounds of public safety). All these make the West an inhospitable environment for Islam, which is all to the good.

Islam is a way of life for a tribal and nomadic culture. Each tribe guarded its patch and at the same time engaged in raids against other tribes for booty and women (same thing). Mohammed's significant contribution was to codify a disparate code extending over several tribes into a single one. A similar thing was achieved by Genghis Khan, and in much the same way, was eminently successful in expanding the domain of his empire of booty. Through history there has been conflict between settled or agricultural communities who invented agriculture, and the nomadic one. Settled communities eventually had surplus and were able to devote more time to other pursuits that led to civilisation. The nomadic culture OTH depended on raids and the ensuing booty. Islam would have died away had it not been so succesful in mixing the divine and the nomadic culture, which led to conquest of settled and prosperous communities, and then living off the proceeds of empire. Civilisation of the settled communities though marched on and the empire of the nomad came to an end when the Ottoman empire was dissolved. Islam was in the process of withering away as a consequence but for a couple "miracles" that saved Islam's bacon.

First was the oil bonanza, and the second, the far more important one - the open door policy of the West as regards immigration. Immigration of muslims is really an invasion, an invasion that had been stopped for good but for the cupidity of Western politicians in allowing millions of Muslims into the West. Now we have to live with the horrendous consequences of those decisions. We are being dragged back to the Middle ages where religion was the decisive factor in political discourse. Muslims live by the islamic code ie the nomadic code. One sees this in the way that islamic areas in the West become ghettos in quick time- it is part and parcel of the nomad way of life, as he simply ups tent when the resources have run out and moves to greener pastures - in this context, where the benefits are more generuous. Through history one has seen that the nomadic life style and the settled life are diametrically opposed. When both are forced to live side by side, as we are now doing in the West, a severe clash is inevitable.

Some claim that Islam will die as a global force during this century, simply because its core ideas aren't flexible enough to adapt to a modern world. This pre-supposes that Islam will have to rely on its own tenets. Islam is basically parasitical, and will continue to survive on the back of the rest of humanity as long as we allow it to do so. The roots of Jihad have been invigorated primarily due to immigration to the West and Saudi money. The only way that islam will die out, is if it is contained within dar-ul-Islam. No immigration and all contact reduced to the necessary. This will buy time. Solutions like making them fight among each other, pushing Muslims all out of Europe etc. is buying time - future generations still have to solve the problem. There is nothing wrong with buying time - the advent of the modern age and technologies like TV/cable/Internet MIGHT slowly eat away at Islam and slowly solve the problem. The problem is still whether the time taken by the modern world to penetrate inside Islam will be too long for the world to survive.

Ending the problem for good would require large parts of the opinion makers of the world recognizing that Islam is not a "religion" but an "ideology". Once that is done then the ideology would have to be tackled on all levels just like Communism. However, attaining the "moral high ground" is good and necessary, but will not by itself be enough. Who ever won a war while trying not to hurt the enemy’s feelings? The playing field will NEVER be level. Islam fights from Heaven. You cannot change that fact, for devout Muslims. There is no higher place than heaven. Muslims have no need for a level field. They, according to their Koran is the word of God. There is no "high ground" that we can occupy, in regards to Islam, in the eyes of Muslims, only in our own. The Buddhists of Central Asia undoubtedly held the "moral high ground" in relations to Muslims. They are all dead now. In the end, it is possible that we will win or lose by the sword. At the very least, we must be prepared to back up our ideological war with force on certain occasions. Holding a higher moral standard isn't going to defeat an Iranian President with nukes, threatening another Holocaust.

Islam also teaches Muslims to see themselves as part of a nation of Muslims who happen to live in different countries – even in non-Muslim ones. Their loyalty to the nation state is subordinated to the loyalty to the Ummah. This is so even if they are second or third generation British or American or whatever. Each new generation will be taught by Islam to maintain its primary loyalty to the Ummah. Even new converts switch loyalty. In World War IV, the US has handicapped itself by making false declarations such as “Islam is peace”. All world wars have at least three components – the military, ideological and the economic. In World War III, the ideological component was more important than the military one. In World War I and II, it was the military component that was more important. Yet by praising Islam, Bush and Blair have already given up the ideological warfare without firing a shot.

You cannot defeat Islamism without defeating Islam. It is like trying to fight Communism while praising Marxist economic theories! In the Cold War, the US and its allies did not hesitate to argue that Marxism is a false ideology. Marx's ideas are wrong and cannot lead mankind to a better future. The democratic world must make the same case against Islam. Otherwise, we cannot win without relying heavily on the military component, which means more bloodshed. Perhaps we cannot win at all. Remember what Sun Wu said in his classic, “The Art of War”. The side with the higher moral standing is more likely to win. To do this, a leader must convince his people that their cause is just. You cannot persuade your people to make exertions if they do not understand what they are up against. Thus the burden of ideological warfare falls on groups like FFI.

Islam is a warrior’s creed that served its early followers well. From impoverished desert tribes, they rose to forge an empire in a short time that stretched from Spain to India. The ethos it engendered – brotherhood for believers, contempt and hatred for non-believers, belief in heavenly rewards for fallen warriors, a high fertility rate (which requires the subordination of women), blind obedience – created formidable warriors. But these same qualities are handicaps for Muslims in the age of the microchip. Today they lead to poverty, belligerency, war and defeat. Many Muslims look back with fondness to their days of glory and try to recover their former days by using the old methods. That is why there is today a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism across the Muslim world. They are bewildered at their weakness and look for conspiracy theories. Muslims think their failure is due to some Jewish or American plot not realizing that failure comes from within themselves. They are out of touch with reality. Once were warriors, Muslims are now like Don Quixote tilting at windmills in a world they no longer understand.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

The West in the 21st Century

Samuel P. Huntington's now almost legendary essay about The Clash of Civilizations has generated a lot of discussion, and some justified criticism. Some would claim that there is no clash of civilizations, just a clash between a global, universal civilization and Islamic neo-barbarism. But Huntington does have some points. The West is still the leading civilization on the planet, but it is in decline. Both because we constitute an ever-shrinking part of global demography, and because we have lost confidence in our own culture. The beginning of the 21st century could perhaps be labelled "the retreat of the Western order", as the Islamic world is challenging us ideologically and China in particular is challenging us economically.

There are many possible scenarios for the first half of the 21st century.

1. Another Atlantic/Western century

The intra-Western, Atlantic ties between Europe and North America will still be the most important and defining global axis. Although not impossible, this is probably not the most likely alternative at this point, given the economic and cultural weakness of Europe in particular.

2. Another American century

The USA, more than Europe and Asia, will continue to be the world's unchallenged superpower. The 21st century will be a continuation of the American Age that started in the 20th century.

3. The Asian/Chinese century

The world will return to the Asia-centric world we had before the rise of Europe and the West. Will this be a world dominated by China, or by Asia as a whole, including India? Will the rise of Asian economies trigger nationalistic rivalries and devastating intra-Asian wars such as WW1 in Europe, or will they cooperate peacefully?

4. The Pacific century

The USA may remain the world's leading power, but Europe fades off the global scene and leaves her spot open for Asia. Global affairs will be shaped by the twin pillars of the USA and East Asia, mainly China.

5. The Anglosphere - Indian century

I believe this is what has been predicted by Mark Steyn, among others. The USA and the UK, the major powers of the previous 3 centuries, will be at the centre of this one, too. But they will share the spot with India and maybe some other countries such as Japan, "honorary members" of the Anglosphere. This alliance will try to contain China, and will have hostile relations with the Islamic world.

6. The Islamic century - Neo-Barbarism and Chaos, the new Dark Ages

Islam manages to derail the West, both Europe and later North America. This disrupts global trade, and the ripples create chaos in other parts of the world, including East Asia. India will be drawn directly into the conflict with Islam, as will Russia and Israel.

In most of the above scenarios, I take it for granted that the USA will remain a major global player, and find it likely that Asia will increase its share of global BNP (although not necessarily to the point of dominance). The big question mark here is Europe. Will Europe become Eurabia, and be crushed by the other infidel powers? Will she slowly decline into third world status, or will she have the strength to expel Islam and forge a new beginning for herself, after generations of decline?

The West needs to reinvent itself, but it should also form a strategic alliance with India. Bush has already adopted a policy designed to draw India closer to the United States in a strategic alliance. This is a good move. Bush has arranged for India to receive some of the very high tech weapons that America's allows only its closest allies to have. Both the U.S. and India were British colonies and have that British influence in common. This helps Americans and Indians communicate even though their religion and cultures are very different. Given that Islam is an enemy to both India and the United States, the combination is a natural one.

It is also my firm conviction that we need to get rid of both the European Union and the United Nations. At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama pronounced that we had arrived at "The End of History", and that capitalism and liberal democracy would now be the only global system left. But when I look at Europe today, I see democracies under threat because of an elaborate Eurabian bureaucracy and Islamic fanaticism. I see countries unwilling or unable to defend themselves against massive immigration/colonization, and the possible dawn of neo-barbarism. Has democracy become too soft to function? Have we arrived at "the End of Democracy" instead of "the End of History?" What does it take for a democracy to work? Can you still retain a democracy with massive illegal immigration going on? Is Multiculturalism inherently anti-democratic? Some people claim that the nation state is a redundant concept in a globalized world, but I can't see many democratic societies not based on a nation state. Can you? To me, the EU is the perfect example of how democracy becomes weakened when you try to make an organization above the nation state. And the UN is unacceptable because it allows dictatorships and corrupt non-democratic states to dictate democratic ones. Until we have something better, if ever, the nation state is the best way ever discovered of organizing society to provide the greatest good to the greatest number of people. The problem I think is that people get confused between democracy and human rights. Obviously you can't have pure democracy -- that is just mob rule. As some wag once wrote, "Two wolves voting to eat the sheep." That's why the famous concept of "checks and balances" were built into the US system of government -- to give some protection to the sheep. The framers of the US constitution thought long and hard about pure democracy and recognized its limitations.

The US system, with its separation of executive and legislative powers, isn't nearly as "democratic" as the European parliamentary system. Small parties have no influence there -- that's why special interest groups like feminists are often represented by lobbying organizations like NOW here rather than actual political parties as in Europe. But such a set-up mitigates against extremism -- in a Parliamentary system some extremist small party can exert influence beyond its numbers due to providing the swing vote in coalitions. Within the US system, there is a wide spectrum of political beliefs across the two parties. The Democrats have a liberal, centrist, and rightiest wing. Ditto the Republicans (although the liberal Republicans are a dying breed.) Under our system, Republicans are allowed to vote for Democratic proposals and Democrats are allowed to vote for Republican proposals. And representatives do frequently "cross party lines" to vote on issues that matter to their constituents. There is no such thing as "required vote" where you have to vote the way your party votes or else leave the party. Every vote on every issue to come up in the Congress is a "free vote." I think this is superior because it is voting on issues on an individual basis, not on a "group" basis. Of course the party in power does apply pressure, arm-twisting, etc. to get their members to vote "the Republican agenda" etc., but there is no legal requirement for them to vote so.

Democracy is also a secular ideology and its proponents can be as intolerant as any religious fanatic. Other forms of government are viewed as illegitimate and ought to be converted into democracies. Many democrats cannot tolerate any kind of dictatorship – not the fascist kind nor the communist kind or the Islamist kind like what you see in Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Islamists think that the only legitimate form of government is an Islamic state and therefore oppose Bush's plans with suicide bombers. Thus two intolerant ideologies, one secular and the other religious are fighting it out in the sands of Iraq. However, I believe that democracy is not the end of history. Francis Fukuyama is wrong. Democracy will one day be replaced by something else. Perhaps, in a thousand years' time, people will view democrats of our present era as being intolerant of other forms of governments like people of our era view medieval Christians as intolerant of other religions.

Only a fool nowadays would use a phrase such as "international community," which attempts to treat Syria and Iceland as the same kind of members, or Costa Rica and Saudi Arabia, as similarly situated and behaving. What nonsense. There is no "international community." There is no "community" which contains Iceland and Libya, Italy and Saudi Arabia, the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Some of these are our enemies; they wish us ill, they do not wish us well. Infidels and Believers cannot -- according to Islam itself, according to everything about Islam -- form a community. There is only the umma al-islamiyya, the Community of Believers. All others must be kept at bay, inveigled, fooled, undermined, ultimately conquered, and conclusively subjugated. No other possible outcome, according to what is contained in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, is possible. The phrase "international community" is telling. Those who use it are telling us something about themselves. And what they are telling us isn't flattering.

There are no "united" nations. There is an organization that has been undermined from within. It is now an obstacle to the wellbeing of all those who wish to see clearly what is at stake in the worldwide Jihad, and to preserve themselves, in Europe, in America, in Russia, and in the Middle East, from the imposition of a belief-system -- through being overrun, slowly but surely, by adherents of that belief-system -- that has left every place it has conquered intellectually impoverished, and in every other way as well. Taking the U.N. seriously is by now as absurd as, in September 1939, going to the League of Nations (or as those incurable salon-habitués, the French, liked to call it, la Société des Nations, the "society or community of nations"), to ask it to please, please, please deal with Mr. Hitler -- he is behaving so badly.

Should the entire European Union simply be dismantled? I've started to wonder whether the whole thing, just like Islam, coincidentally, is simply beyond reform and a threat to democracy. Critics claim that the Council of Ministers, the EU’s supreme law-making body, which decides two thirds of all Britain’s laws, is the only legislature outside the Communist dictatorships of North Korea and Cuba to pass laws in secret.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Online Workshop, Last Days

The last post I will make here will be about Islam's and our weak points. That part of the workshop is still very much going on, and you are still encouraged to join in with comments and viewpoints. Let me toss in a few more topics at the end: How do we deal with the dhimmi Western and infidel media? What can be done to redirect the masses to less censored news at the Internet?

I'm not sure if I have the time, but I was thinking of making a post called "beheading nations," about how immigrants are heavily concentrated in most major cities in Western Europe, in effect cutting the rest of the country off from its "brain" and nerve centres. If you have any links about this in English from Holland, Germany or pretty much anywhere in Western Europe, you can post them here.

Friday, December 16, 2005

Sharia police, motorcyclists clash in Nigeria over ban on women

A clash between Sharia police (hisbah) and commercial taxi moped operators called 'Achaba' in northern Nigeria's Kano city on Wednesday left 11 people injured and scores of vehicles vandalized. Fighting broke out on the frenetic streets of this commercial city when the hisbah began to enforce the state's ban on women riding on taxi mopeds, a common and speedy means of transportation in Nigerian cities. Hundreds of hisbah took positions at strategic locations in the city, forcing women passengers to get off mopeds. This angered the moped operators who mobilized and launched attacks on the hisbah. Armed with clubs and stones, the achaba attacked the green-uniformed hisbah and public tricycles, leaving at least 11 people injured and two dozen tricycles damaged. An AFP reporter who visited the hisbah headquarters saw 10 young men with various degrees of injuries arrested in the clashes being interrogated by hisbah officials. "We have received reports that one of our men was injured in the attacks while 24 tricycles were vandalized" Mohammed Yahaya, a hisbah commander said in the hisbah headquarters in the metropolis. "We have made several arrests but I can't give you figures at the moment", Yahaya said.

Kano, one of a dozen mainly Muslim northern states to readopt the Sharia legal system since 1999, passed a legislation banning women riding on taxi mopeds in May 2004. Tagged the Traffic Amendment Law 2004, the law provides for six months imprisonment for defaulting motorcyclists with a fine of 5,000 naira ($36). He also risks to forfeit permit for six months. A month later, a 9,000-man hisbah outfit was formed by the state government to enforce the Sharia, including the new traffic law. "This is just the beginning of our resolve to enforce the ban on women riding on achaba", Yahaya Farouk Chedi, head of the hisbah, told a press conference. "We have begun by asking the women to get off the bikes and soon we will start arresting defaulters and taking them to court for prosecution", he added. "The government ought to ban more grievous offenses than carrying women on motorbikes", said Sahabi Idris, a taxi moped operator, after he was forced by the hisbah to drop his female passenger. "There are beer parlors, night clubs and brothels close to the governor's residence and nobody is saying anything about them. The government is just playing politics with the Sharia," he said.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Fjordman at Frontpage Magazine

My post about the Muslim rape wave in Sweden has generated some interest. It was picked up by Ali Sina at Faith Freedom International, and today by Frontpage Magazine. It is possible I will set a new record for both weekly and daily visitors at the Fjordman blog this week, and I got a reference in the Washington Times a few days ago.

I keep getting MANY requests to continue blogging. I will still close down this blog in a few days, but I may write something and post it at other blogs or websites such as Gates of Vienna, Viking Observer, Jihad Watch and FFI once in a while, if I have the time. I will also post comments at LittleGreenFootballs every now and then.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Online Workshop Part 6: An Alliance of Civilizations?

How will the relationship be between the West and non-Western cultures in the 21st century? My best bet is that the West (at least the USA, maybe not Europe) will continue to be the most dynamic civilization for a long time to come, but maybe not powerful enough to keep up the present world order alone. Is an alliance with non-Western civilizations such as India, which we are already seeing some signs of, a viable alternative? Is it possible to have this with a democratic China, or is China destined to be a rival more than a partner? Are we seeing the signs of a global, universal civilization, which will join forces against Islam?

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Online Workshop Part 5: The End of History or the End of Democracy?

I was planning to shut down the blog by now, but I have a handful of posts that I'd like to finish before leaving the blogosphere, so I'll keep on blogging for a few more days. Online workshop parts 3 and 4 are still going on:

But let us introduce another topic. At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama pronounced that we had arrived at "The End of History", and that capitalism and liberal democracy would now be the only global system left. But when I look at Europe today, I see democracies under threat because of an elaborate Eurabian bureaucracy and Islamic fanaticism. I see countries unwilling or unable to defend themselves against massive immigration/colonization, and the possible dawn of neo-barbarism. Has democracy become too soft to function? Have we arrived at "the End of Democracy" instead of "the End of History?" What does it take for a democracy to work? Can you still retain a democracy with massive illegal immigration going on? Is Multiculturalism inherently anti-democratic? Some people claim that the nation state is a redundant concept in a globalized world, but I can't see many democratic societies not based on a nation state. Can you? To me, the EU is the perfect example of how democracy becomes weakened when you try to make an organization above the nation state. And the UN is unacceptable because it allows dictatorships and corrupt non-democratic states to dictate democratic ones. Until we have something better, if ever, the nation state is the best way ever discovered of organizing society to provide the greatest good to the greatest number of people. The problem I think is that people get confused between democracy and human rights. Obviously you can't have pure democracy -- that is just mob rule. As some wag once wrote, "Two wolves voting to eat the sheep." That's why the famous concept of "checks and balances" were built into the US system of government -- to give some protection to the sheep. The framers of the US constitution thought long and hard about pure democracy and recognized its limitations.

The US system, with its separation of executive and legislative powers, isn't nearly as "democratic" as the European parliamentary system. Small parties have no influence there -- that's why special interest groups like feminists are often represented by lobbying organizations like NOW here rather than actual political parties as in Europe. But such a set-up mitigates against extremism -- in a Parliamentary system some extremist small party can exert influence beyond its numbers due to providing the swing vote in coalitions. Within the US system, there is a wide spectrum of political beliefs across the two parties. The Democrats have a liberal, centrist, and rightiest wing. Ditto the Republicans (although the liberal Republicans are a dying breed.) Under our system, Republicans are allowed to vote for Democratic proposals and Democrats are allowed to vote for Republican proposals. And representatives do frequently "cross party lines" to vote on issues that matter to their constituents. There is no such thing as "required vote" where you have to vote the way your party votes or else leave the party. Every vote on every issue to come up in the Congress is a "free vote." I think this is superior because it is voting on issues on an individual basis, not on a "group" basis. Of course the party in power does apply pressure, arm-twisting, etc. to get their members to vote "the Republican agenda" etc., but there is no legal requirement for them to vote so.

Democracy is also a secular ideology and its proponents can be as intolerant as any religious fanatic. Other forms of government are viewed as illegitimate and ought to be converted into democracies. Many democrats cannot tolerate any kind of dictatorship – not the fascist kind nor the communist kind or the Islamist kind like what you see in Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Islamists think that the only legitimate form of government is an Islamic state and therefore oppose Bush's plans with suicide bombers. Thus two intolerant ideologies, one secular and the other religious are fighting it out in the sands of Iraq. However, I believe that democracy is not the end of history. Francis Fukuyama is wrong. Democracy will one day be replaced by something else. Perhaps, in a thousand years' time, people will view democrats of our present era as being intolerant of other forms of governments like people of our era view medieval Christians as intolerant of other religions.Hugh Fitzgerald: Stop taking the UN seriously

Only a fool nowadays would use a phrase such as "international community," which attempts to treat Syria and Iceland as the same kind of members, or Costa Rica and Saudi Arabia, as similarly situated and behaving. What nonsense. There is no "international community." There is no "community" which contains Iceland and Libya, Italy and Saudi Arabia, the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Some of these are our enemies; they wish us ill, they do not wish us well. Infidels and Believers cannot -- according to Islam itself, according to everything about Islam -- form a community. There is only the umma al-islamiyya, the Community of Believers. All others must be kept at bay, inveigled, fooled, undermined, ultimately conquered, and conclusively subjugated. No other possible outcome, according to what is contained in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, is possible. The phrase "international community" is telling. Those who use it are telling us something about themselves. And what they are telling us isn't flattering.

There are no "united" nations. There is an organization that has been undermined from within. It is now an obstacle to the wellbeing of all those who wish to see clearly what is at stake in the worldwide Jihad, and to preserve themselves, in Europe, in America, in Russia, and in the Middle East, from the imposition of a belief-system -- through being overrun, slowly but surely, by adherents of that belief-system -- that has left every place it has conquered intellectually impoverished, and in every other way as well. Taking the U.N. seriously is by now as absurd as, in September 1939, going to the League of Nations (or as those incurable salon-habitués, the French, liked to call it, la Société des Nations, the "society or community of nations"), to ask it to please, please, please deal with Mr. Hitler -- he is behaving so badly.Should the EU be Dismantled?

Should the entire European Union simply be dismantled? I've started to wonder whether the whole thing, just like Islam, coincidentally, is simply beyond reform and a threat to democracy. Critics claim that the Council of Ministers, the EU’s supreme law-making body, which decides two thirds of all Britain’s laws, is the only legislature outside the Communist dictatorships of North Korea and Cuba to pass laws in secret.

'Common law' nearer for Samis

Efforts to give North European Samis a common law cutting across national borders took a major step forward on Wednesday as experts submitted a draft convention for the indigenous Nordic population. Of a total of 75,000 Samis – formerly known as Lapps or Laplanders – in the Nordic region, 50,000 live in Norway, 20,000 in Sweden and the rest in Finland. Each of the three countries currently applies its own laws to Samis and the new text, after three years of negotiations, aims to harmonize their economic, cultural and linguistic rights regardless of national boundaries. "The Nordic Sami convention will represent historic progress for the recognition of the rights of indigenous people," Pekka Aikio, president of the Sami parliamentary council, told reporters in Helsinki. "It has been clear for a long time that national borders obstruct cooperation between Samis. Cooperation has been made particularly difficult by the fact that all states treat Sami questions differently and have different laws and a different judiciary," he said. For the first time in a joint declaration, Samis are recognized as the region's indigenous population and not just a minority, and as having a right to self-determination as well as having suffered "injustices". The convention's authors said it was to establish a minimum level of rights, leaving each state free to go further towards granting Samis special rights. This is a reflection of divergent views between the three countries, with Finland dragging its feet on some Sami rights, especially the exclusive right to hunt reindeer. Finland was also still doubtful on the exact meaning of self-determination for Samis, as well as their water and land rights, Finland's minister for justice, Leena Luhtanen, said.

The Sami people were, before the recent waves of immigration, the most significant ethnic minority in Scandinavia. They inhabit parts of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and northwestern Russia, the region sometimes called Lapland. In the 1980s, they were granted a Constitutional right to preserve their culture in Norway. Earlier this year the Norwegian parliament, Stortinget, passed a law that went further than that, granting the Sami people special property rights in the northernmost province of Finmmark, over that of Norwegian citizens of non-Sami origin. Carl I. Hagen, leader of the right-wing Progress Party, has argued that the law is racist, in effect creating an apartheid regime in Finnmark. I tend to agree with him. My first thought about the law regarding Finnmark is that it should be repealed. It sets a very dangerous precedent to give a special legal status to a particular ethnic group, at a time when this country is rapidly becoming the home of people from all around the world. It is the road to Balkanization, and yet another indication that our leaders have completely lost their grip on reality. Groups don't have rights. Only individuals do.

On the other hand: The special status granted to the Sami people is based on the logic behind the UN Convention concerning Indigenous Peoples. The interesting question, which nobody in our intellectual establishment has asked, is what legal ramifications this law has for the rest of Norway. If the Sami people can be given status as indigenous people in the northernmost regions of Norway, why can't Norwegians be given the same status in the rest of the country? After all, we have stayed here for centuries, probably even for thousands of years. And we belong to a small "tribe" of only 4 million people, a drop in the sea of humanity. Again, I am as a matter of principle skeptical of granting rights to groups within a country. But it is an intriguing question. I have no illusions about the UN, but I find it difficult to see how our politicians could deny us this when they just gave it to others.

According to a new study from the Crime Prevention Council, Brå, it is four times more likely that a known rapist is born abroad, compared to persons born in Sweden. Resident aliens from Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia dominate the group of rape suspects. According to these statistics, almost half of all perpetrators are immigrants. In Norway and Denmark, we know that non-Western immigrants, which frequently means Muslims, are grossly overrepresented on rape statistics. In Oslo, Norway, immigrants were involved in two out of three rape charges in 2001. The numbers in Denmark were the same, and even higher in the city of Copenhagen with three out of four rape charges. Sweden has a larger immigrant, including Muslim, population than any other country in northern Europe. The numbers there are likely to be at least as bad as with its Scandinavian neighbors. The actual number is thus probably even higher than what the authorities are reporting now, as it doesn't include second generation immigrants. Lawyer Ann Christine Hjelm, who has investigated violent crimes in Svea high court, found that 85 per cent of the convicted rapists were born on foreign soil or by foreign parents.

A group of Swedish teenage girls has designed a belt that requires two hands to remove and which they hope will deter would-be rapists. "It's like a reverse chastity belt," one of the creators, 19-year-old Nadja Björk, told AFP, meaning that the wearer is in control, instead of being controlled. Björk and one of her partners now plan to start a business to mass produce the belts and are currently in negotiations with potential partners. "But I'm not doing this for the money," she said. "I'm really passionate about stopping rape. I think it's terrible." In an online readers' poll from the newspaper Aftonbladet, 82% of the women expressed fear to go outside after dark. There are reports of rapes happening in broad daylight. 30 guests in a Swedish public bath watched as a 17-year-old girl was raped recently, and nobody did anything. The girl was first approached by 16-year-old boy. He and his friends followed her as she walked away to the grotto, and inside the grotto he got her blocked in the corner, ripped off her bikini and raped her, while his friend held her firm.

There are even reports of Swedish girls being attacked and cut with knives on the dance floor. A 21-year-old man who came to Sweden a couple of years ago admits that he has a low opinion of Swedish females –or “whores” as he calls them. He is now prosecuted, suspected of cuttingeight girls in several pubs. He is also charged with raping a girl at a private party, and with sexually harassing another girl in the apartment. Several witnesses claim that the 21 year old has said that he hates Swedish women.

Some Muslim immigrants admit their bias quite openly. An Islamic Mufti in Copenhagen sparked a political outcry after publicly declaring that women who refuse to wear headscarves are "asking for rape." Apparently, he's not the only one thinking this way. “It is not as wrong raping a Swedish girl as raping an Arab girl,” says Hamid. “The Swedish girl gets a lot of help afterwards, and she had probably fucked before, anyway. But the Arab girl will get problems with her family. For her, being raped is a source of shame. It is important that she retains her virginity until she marries.” It was no coincidence that it was a Swedish girl that was gang raped in Rissne – this becomes obvious from the discussion with Ali, Hamid, Abdallah and Richard. All four have disparaging views on Swedish girls, and think this attitude is common among young men with immigrant background. “It is far too easy to get a Swedish whore…… girl, I mean;” says Hamid, and laughs over his own choice of words. “Many immigrant boys have Swedish girlfriends when they are teenagers. But when they get married, they get a proper woman from their own culture who has never been with a boy. That’s what I am going to do. I don’t have too much respect for Swedish girls. I guess you can say they get fucked to pieces.”

The number of rapes committed by Muslim immigrants in Western nations are so extremely high that it is difficult to view them only as random acts of individuals. It resembles warfare. Muhammad himself had forced sex (rape) with several of his slave girls/concubines. This is perfectly allowed, both in the sunna and in the Koran. If you postulate that many of the Muslims in Europe view themselves as a conquering army and that European women are simply war booty, it all makes perfect sense and is in full accordance with Islamic law. Western women are not so much regarded by most Muslims as individuals, but as "their women," the women who "belong" to hostile Infidels. They are booty, to be taken, just as the land of the Infidels someday will drop, it is believed, into Muslim hand. This is not mere crime, but ideologically-justified crime or rather, in Muslim eyes, attacks on Infidels scarcely qualify as crime. Western women are cheap and offensive. We Muslims are here, here to stay, and we have a right to take advantage of this situation. It is our view of the matter that should prevail. Western goods, like the land on which we now live, belong to Allah and to the best of men -- his Believers. Western women, too, essentially belong to us -- our future booty. No wonder there is a deep and increasing suspicion against Muslims in the Swedish and European public.

Sweden has national elections less than a year from now. Here is a suggested draft email, in English and Swedish, that you can send in to Swedish politicians and media to protest the lack of honesty about what Muslim immigration is doing to the country:

I would hereby like to protest against the passivity and the lack of resolve demonstrated by Swedish authorities in the face of a huge spike in the number of rapes in their country. It is time for Swedish politicians, Swedish media and the Swedish public to admit that the large increase in the number of rape charges in their country during the past generation is intimately tied to the immigration that has taken place during that same time period. The attitude among many Muslim men is that women who are not veiled and act properly submissive have themselves to blame if something happens to them. Such a line of thinking is incompatible with the culture of freedom in any Western country. It means that as long as Muslim immigration continues, Sweden will continue to import an Islamic culture that will destroy women’s freedom in Swedish society. The strains caused by immigration are now so large that unless something serious is done about this, pretty soon Sweden will face the same kind of riots we have recently seen in France, and will approach the point of permanent ethnic and religious strife. Swedish politicians and media need to put the well-being of their daughters above that of political correctness and their own Multicultural vanity, and it is shocking that they actually need to be reminded of this. It is an international embarrassment to Sweden as a nation that Swedes travel around the world to lecture about women’s rights, and at the same time their own young women are finding that their most basic rights, such as being able to go outside wearing normal clothes without being harassed, are slipping away. It’s a sham, and it needs to end. Unless Swedish authorities are able to provide basic security to a population that has some of the highest tax rates in the world, the Swedish government should publicly admit its inadequacy and resign from office. At the very least, it should be honest enough to tell Swedish citizens that they must provide security for themselves, and stop making it difficult for people to do this. The Swedish general elections are less than a year away, and this time, Muslim immigration needs to be raised to the very top of the public agenda.

Gender quota set for company boards of directors

Female directors must make up at least 40 percent of all new shareholder-owned companies' boards of directors from January 1. Existing stock companies will have two years to conform to the new quotas. Investors are already protesting after Norway's new justice minister and government minister in charge of equality issues announced the change in corporate regulations. Retailing entrepreneur Ola Mæle, for example, thinks the mandate will actually harm women's careers, not enhance them. Mæle told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) Friday morning that women brought onto company boards simply because they're women may leave them in a position of being "second-class" directors. Government Minister Karita Bekkemellem nonetheless is firm in pushing through the new corporate regulation that politicians have been talking about for years. "Now there's no way back," she said. "This is all about sharing power and influence and it is intervention in private ownership, but it was overdue." The new regulations will apply to all stockheld companies, those formed as an "ASA" that have broad ownership, as well as state-owned share companies and other publicly owned firms. Violation of the new rules for board composition will be penalized with forced dissolution of the company.

Wikipedia needs safeguards that work

The free, online encyclopedia Wikipedia is widely used, but also increasingly criticized. I personally use it and will think it ok to put up a link to a post there about, say, Julius Caesar. However, it gets a lot weaker when you move closer to contemporary and politically sensitive issues. That's why Faith Freedom International has decided to make their own, online encyclopedia about Islam, for instance:

Jimmy Wales has often described himself as the constitutional monarch of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia written and edited by volunteers. Queen Elizabeth II of England and other constitutional monarchs can only intervene in affairs of state on rare occasions of great crisis. Wales, who co-founded the non-profit Wikipedia in 2001, exercised his royal power last week. But he only took a tiny step in the midst of a crisis where bolder leadership is required. They're not enough to resolve Wikipedia's fundamental dilemma: It can't meet what Wales calls the project's primary goal -- producing ``a free, high-quality encyclopedia'' -- while also clinging to the utopian concept that anyone can contribute without restrictions. How this crisis plays out will reverberate across the emerging landscape of ``social media,'' where loose groups -- such as Wikipedia's volunteer contributors -- come together through the Web to create news, community forums and information.

The result of Wikipedia's open editing system is predictable: Most contributors provide useful material, while a small number of ``trolls'' repeatedly deface the encyclopedia. Wikipedia is also plagued by endless ``revert wars,'' where dueling groups keep reversing each other's changes to controversial articles. This undermines the credibility of Wikipedia, which now offers an unprecedented 857,000 articles in English, along with versions in more than 100 other languages. Wikipedia is becoming a first reference stop for millions of people, from schoolchildren to journalists, including me. But many of these users don't realize a small percentage of articles are flawed. Even more troubling, there's no way to know when you've hit one of those defective entries. That's why I never put a fact from Wikipedia into one of my columns without first double-checking it elsewhere.

I have a suggestion: Wales should issue a royal decree moving Wikipedia to a ``gatekeeper'' model, borrowed from successful open-source software projects such as the Linux operating system and the Firefox browser. These projects are administered by networks of trusted volunteers who carefully review additions and changes before they are made, and there's a hierarchy to resolve disputes. Wikipedia is now big enough, with a core group of 13,000 active volunteers, to pre-screen all of its contents. New entries and edits could still be submitted -- even anonymously -- by any visitor to the Wikipedia site but would be placed in a kind of holding pen until one of the trusted volunteers took a look and said OK.

Quality is holistic, it requires understanding. Getting individual facts right isn't good enough. There is no gradual slope of quality as there is with factual accuracy, only a long plain of mediocricity followed by a sharp rise at the end. Britannica is at the top of that rise because it is written by individuals who know how to write, who know their subject, and know how to present it clearly in few words. Wikipedia is at the bottom of the same rise because it is written by committee. Britannica is consistently good. Wikipedia is good only by accident. Britannica gives experts the freedom to do their job, Wikipedia drowns their experts in tedious committee work. Wikipedia should perhaps emulate the free software movement. A free software system like Linux is not written by any Joe R. Newbie with a text editor. Linux is controlled by an elite of brilliant hackers. They decide which contributions to accept, and which to reject. They ensure that the whole isn't sacrificed in favor of the parts, and they decide when to rewrite code that has deteriorated in a larger sense than just containing individual bugs. This way of working actually works, and should be emulated by Wikipedia. Let anyone make a contribution, but use experts to guard the gates.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Replacement candidate: Islam is terror

A few days after the Danish People’s Party (DF) punished its Copenhagen mayoral candidate for publishing racist remarks on her website, removing her from the post as the party spokesman on educational affairs, her successor went ahead and described the Muslim religion as a terrorist movement. Defeated mayoral candidate Louise Frevert’s website compared Muslims with tumours, causing a public outrage. Though she blamed the statement on her website editor, DF punished her by removing her from a number of spokesman posts in parliament, including the one on educational policies. Her replacement, Martin Henriksen, however, has also been criticised for having a website that is equally anti-Muslim. ‘From its beginning, Islam has been a terrorist movement,’ Henriksen stated on his website, warning against letting Muslims run for office in parliament and municipal councils. ‘It’s well known that Islam is lying low, well-knowing that no Islamic group or state has the military power it takes to conquer us. The goal we know, the method is to quietly take over and infiltrate our democratic institutions,’ Henriksen said on his website. Danish converts to Islam get their share of the blame as ‘moral criminals’. ‘These young Danes, who turn their backs on their heritage and thereby all of us, are committing an indescribable moral crime,’ the website stated. The website was discussed in a DF parliamentary group meeting last Thursday, where Henriksen said he had received full backing from his fellow party members. ‘It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that an MP from the Danish People’s Party is critical of Islam. It’s a part of the party’s policy, so I’m not removing anything from my website,’ Henriksen told national broadcaster DR.

More than half of Asia's software illegal

More than half the computer software used in the Asia Pacific region last year was illegally downloaded and cost the region billions in lost economic potential, a study released on Thursday said. According to the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the regional software piracy rate was 53 percent in 2004, unchanged from the previous year. Asia's IT industry is worth $195 billion and brings in at least $120 billion in tax revenues, BSA said. The biggest culprits were Vietnam, which topped the list with a piracy rate of 92 percent, followed by China at 90 percent, BSA said in the study that it commissioned research firm International Data Corp. to carry out. Indonesia had the third-worst record with 87 percent of software illegally downloaded. Thailand took fourth spot at 79 percent.Microsoft ready for Xbox rematch against Japanese foes

When Microsoft brought the first Xbox game console to the home turf of its Japanese archrivals in 2002 it was nearly two years behind Sony's PlayStation 2 and it has trailed behind ever since. This time the US software giant is doing its utmost to prevent history from repeating itself. On Saturday it will launch the next-generation Xbox 360 some months ahead of the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution, and in time for the Christmas rush. In a country where brand image is everything, the new sleek, silver Xbox 360 design should prove a plus compared with the chunky black box it replaces. Even so, analysts expect Sony to fight back with a powerful new console of its own next year. They believe that Microsoft will still struggle to make a significant dent in the Japanese icon's share of the game console market. "No one - consumers or software makers - has been talking about the Xbox 360 lately although we only have a couple of days before the release," said Nobuyuki Kawamata, an analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Center. "Given also the fact that basic functions of Xbox 360 are inferior to Sony's next-generation machine, and that there are not many newly-developed titles ready for the Japanese launch, Xbox 360 is not likely to become a must-buy console here in Japan," Kawamata said. The first Xbox, which was launched in 2001 and came to Japan in February 2002, flopped here in part due to a lack of games that appealed to local tastes, analysts say. This time the US software behemoth has turned to local firms like Square Enix to create titles specifically for Japanese gamers.

Norway: ElBaradei Calls for "Elimination of Poverty"

ElBaradei is in Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, just as Yassir Afarat, Dhimmi Carter and other great people have done before him. And he thinks the way to reduce global nuclear tensions is to reduce poverty. Because we all know it was poverty that prompted Iran's president to announce that Muslims should "wipe Israel off the map" and destroy Western civilization, right? RIGHT? Via Western Resistance:

The world should stop treating the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea as isolated cases and instead deal with them in a common effort to eliminate poverty, organized crime and armed conflict, the director general of the United Nations' nuclear monitoring agency said Saturday in accepting the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. The director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said a "good start" would be for the United States and other nuclear powers to cut nuclear weapon stockpiles sharply and redirect spending toward international development. "More than 15 years after the end of the cold war, it is incomprehensible to many that the major nuclear weapon states operate with their arsenals on hair-trigger alert," Dr. ElBaradei, 63, said. Despite some disarmament, he continued, the existence of 27,000 nuclear warheads in various hands around the world still hold the prospect of "the devastation of entire nations in a matter of minutes." Feelings of insecurity and humiliation, exaggerated by today's nuclear imbalance, are behind the spread of bomb-development programs at the national level, said Dr. ElBaradei, who has headed the International Atomic Energy Agency since 1997.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Cultural flash points

Via Jihad Watch. The always excellent Diana West in the Washington Times writes about blasphemy and Islam, and has been reading Fjordman. The story of the UN involvement in the Muhammed cartoons case in Denmark has attracted some attention, especially after Charles Johnson at LittleGreenFootballs linked to it:

Now they want to put him to death — Mohaqeq Nasab, the Afghan editor already sentenced to two years hard labor for "blasphemy" against Islam. Now, Afghan prosecutors want to put him to death. Why? The Muslim editor of Women's Rights magazine published articles in post-Taliban Afghanistan that criticized aspects of Islamic law, including the penalties of stoning for adultery, amputation for theft, and death for leaving Islam. "Sometimes the whole religion and the rules of the religion were attacked," explained Muhammed Aref Rahmani, who sits on Afghanistan's council of Islamic scholars. Attacked? "For instance," Mr. Rahmani told the Chicago Tribune, "he says one woman should be equal to one man, as a witness in a case, which is completely against our religion."

The Islamic furor over a dozen Mohammed cartoons published in a Danish newspaper — and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's refusal to meddle with his country's freedom of speech — continues to rise up the food chain, from death threats and street riots, to ambassadorial protests, to heads-of-state deliberations at the December OIC meeting in Mecca. Denmark's Berlingske Tidende, via the blogger Fjordman (fjordman.blogspot.com), reports that the 56 countries of the OIC have now written the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to "help contain this encroachment on Islam, so the situation won't get out of control." In response, U.N. commissioner Louise Arbour emphasized her "regret" over "any statement or act that could express a lack of respect for the religion of others." Which sounds like the Danes are in U.N.-trouble. But what about the statements or acts — from censorship to death sentences — of the religion that encroach on the rights of others? That's a question no one dares to ask.

Norway Says No to a Free Cuba

Norway has a three-party coalition government, where the Labor Party is the leading force, but which also includes the Socialist Left Party and is backed by the Norwegian Socialist Trade Union (LO). The deputy leader of the Socialist Left Party recently announced that he wants to abolish private property. The leader of the Socialist Left Party, Kristin Halvorsen, is Norway's Minister of Finance. She started her election campaign in 2005 in the Pakistani countryside. Norway, which is a significant player in the global oil market, is actively involved in searching for oil in Iran. No boycott there:

The Norwegian government of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, an extreme-left coalition of Stoltenberg’s Workers’ Party (Ap), the Socialist Left Party (SV) and the green Center Party (Sp), wants to ban Cuban democrats from attending Norway’s national holiday festivities. The SV is also calling for a boycot of Israel. On Monday Jonas Gahr Støre (Ap), the Norwegian Foreign Minister, announced that he is considering to no longer invite opponents of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to the Norwegian embassy’s party in Havana on May 17, Norway’s national holiday. Gahr Støre is doing this at the request of Gerd-Liv Valla, the chairperson of the Norwegian Socialist Trade Union (LO), who considers herself to be the godmother of Stoltenberg’s party. Valla, a former member of the far-left student organisation Kommunistisk Universitetslag, recently visited Cuba. She returned to Oslo with the message that it is more important for Norway to have good relations with Castro than with the Cuban democratic opposition. The Cuban regime refuses to attend events at embassies if representatives of the opposition are also present. Norway is not a member of the European Union, but the latter also believes that the pro-democracy activists in Cuba should stop “provoking” Castro by drawing attention to themselves and ask for freedom. Though the Workers’ Party has no qualms about bashing Cuban dissidents, the demand by prominent leaders of the SV, the second party in the Norwegian government, for a government boycot of Israel is not going down well with the Ap. During the election campaign last Summer the SV had promised its voters a pro-Castro and an anti-Israel policy. Last week, however, Prime Minister Stoltenberg said that the SV has a right to its own opinions, but made it quite clear that boycotting Israel is not the official policy of his government. SV leader Kristin Halvorsen, the Finance Minister, admitted that the coalition agreement does not mention a boycot of Israel.Socialist Left politicians want boycott of Israel

The Socialist Left Party (SV) has already started to work on an action against Israel, in sympathy with the Palestinians, according to the public broadcaster. - The main focus of the campaign will be a general boycott of Israel. We will especially work for a consumer boycott of foodstuffs and cosmetics, but also for a boycott of the sale of arms. Both of which have been adopted by SV, says campaign leader Gjermund Skaar. SV leader Kristin Halvorsen says to Dagsavisen that a boycott of Israel is one of the themes which has not been given a final discussion by the Government. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, however, states that as long as it is understood that a boycott of arms sales to Israel is not the Government's policy, the prime minister will accept that SV expresses its own opinions. - An arms embargo against Israel is not the Government's policy. Boycott is not part of the Government's program declaration (the Soria Moria declaration), says Stoltenberg.

Kashmir shutdown over Quran desecration, Prophet caricature

Shops and establishments in most parts of Kashmir Valley were closed Thursday to protest a Danish newspaper publishing a caricature of the Prophet and the alleged desecration of the Quran in Sopore town. The strike call was given by the separatist Hurriyat Conference group led by Syed Ali Geelani. The Kashmir bar association and other groups supported the shutdown. Authorities have made elaborate security arrangements all over the valley to maintain law and order. Though shops in parts of Kashmir capital Srinagar and other major towns were closed, traffic was plying. Tension is still high in the north Kashmir town of Sopore, famous for its apples, where three drunk youths had desecrated the Quran and also tried to set ablaze the mosque earlier this week.Cartoon protest closes Kashmir

Thousands of shops and businesses were closed down on Thursday in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir in protest against twelve caricatures of the Muslim prophet Mohammed printed in daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September. Jyllands-Posten reported that newspapers in the area said businesses in entire neighbourhoods in the capital of Jammu and the province of Srinagar had been closed down. 'In four to six of the biggest cities in the province shops were closed to express anger over the caricatures of the holy prophet. In some places there were clashes, and people started throwing rocks. Most Muslims feel deeply affronted,' said Abdur Rasheed, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Kashmir Observer. In the city of Sopore, shops were closed in protest. 'We are talking about hundreds of thousands of shops in six of the seven biggest cities. In large areas, 98-99 percent of the shops were closed. People are not allowed on the streets because of the strained situation in the region, so instead they close their shops to demonstrate against the Danish newspaper,' said Meraj Wani from the newspaper Greater Kashmir.

Chinese and Japanese teens differ in aspirations

A glaring discrepancy has emerged between the career ambitions of Chinese female teenagers and their Japanese counterparts, according to a survey published on Tuesday by a leading Japanese think tank. The top five desired careers among Chinese female teens aged 16-19 include president or chief executive of a company, senior management or manager, or teacher. In comparison, the top-five list for Japanese teens include housewife, flight attendant and child-care worker. “Against a backdrop of doubts about the future from a protracted recession, Japanese youths have a very strong desire for stability,” said the report, which was compiled by the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living. “In contrast, young Chinese want to move up in the world.” According to the UNDP, the percentage of total seats in parliament held by women is 20.2 per cent in China, compared with 9.3 per cent in Japan. Meanwhile, the ratio of estimated female to male earned income is 66 per cent in China, compared with 46 per cent in Japan. Separately, the survey also noted Chinese teens thought that Japanese women made “good wives and mothers” and that Japanese were hard workers. Chinese teens said that they were concerned about problems such as wealth disparity and environmental problems.

Sarkozy backs Finkielkraut over Muslim riot comments

Via Uriasposten and Peaktalk. Read the whole article and you will note that Sarkozy’s comments are seen as a full frontal assault on France’s left-wing elites. This certainly helps to set the stage for a very interesting battle over Chirac’s legacy in 2007, where De Villepin for now appears to be the frontrunner:

The storm aroused by French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut refuses to subside. On Sunday, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy threw his full weight behind the beleaguered philosopher, who has been forced to remain cloistered at home following the sharp reactions to an interview he gave to Haaretz. Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Sarkozy said: "Monsieur Finkielkraut is an intellectual who brings honor and pride to French wisdom ... If there is so much criticism of him, it might be because he says things that are correct." The minister was asked about Finkielkraut because several reporters saw similarities between the conservative views the philosopher expressed about the recent riots in France and the tough stance the minister took in dealing with the agitators who took to the street night after night. The liberal weekly Nouvel Observateur devoted its cover story to what it called "the new neo-reactionaries." Alongside Finkielkraut's picture on the cover was a title stating that Finkielkraut and his colleagues had worsened the social chasms in the country. Others mentioned as supporters of similar ideas were Sarkozy, philosopher Andre Gluksman and historian Pierre-Andre Taguieff (who coined the phrase Judeophobia). They are described as belonging to a right-wing wave that is now prominent in France.

Sarkozy appeared ready to take on the media. He had been following the attacks on Finkielkraut for two weeks and was waiting for a suitable opportunity. "What do you want of him?" he asked the media representatives. "M. Finkielkraut does not consider himself obliged to follow the monolithic thinking of many intellectuals, which led to Le Pen winning 24 percent in the elections. The philosophers who frequent the salons and live between Cafe de Flor and Boulevard St. Germain suddenly find that France no longer bears a resemblance to them." This is an unprecedented attack on the left wing by the very person who is seen by many French as being the only one capable of preventing the disintegration of the republic. While interviewees stressed his intellectual acumen, they almost all felt Finkielkraut had slipped up by mentioning the ethnic identity of the rioters - he had described them as blacks, Arabs and Muslims. Nevertheless, to date, all the organizations and bodies that threatened to sue him for racism have changed their minds.

Finkielkraut: "In France, they would like very much to reduce these riots to their social dimension, to see them as a revolt of youths from the suburbs against their situation, against the discrimination they suffer from, against the unemployment. The problem is that most of these youths are blacks or Arabs, with a Muslim identity. Look, in France there are also other immigrants whose situation is difficult - Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese - and they're not taking part in the riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious character. These people were treated like rebels, like revolutionaries. This is the worst thing that could happen to my country. Why? Because the only way to overcome it is to make them feel ashamed. Shame is the starting point of ethics. But instead of making them feel ashamed, we gave them legitimacy. They're `interesting.' They're `the wretched of the earth.' "Imagine for a moment that they were whites, like in Rostock in Germany. Right away, everyone would have said: `Fascism won't be tolerated.' When an Arab torches a school, it's rebellion. When a white guy does it, it's fascism. I'm `color blind.' Evil is evil, no matter what color it is. And this evil, for the Jew that I am, is completely intolerable.

"Moreover, there's a contradiction here. Because if these suburbs were truly in a state of total neglect, there wouldn't be any gymnasiums to torch, there wouldn't be schools and buses. If there are gymnasiums and schools and buses, it's because someone made an effort. Maybe not enough of one, but an effort." I think that the lofty idea of `the war on racism' is gradually turning into a hideously false ideology. And this anti-racism will be for the 21st century what communism was for the 20th century. A source of violence. Today, Jews are attacked in the name of anti-racist discourse: the separation fence, `Zionism is racism.' This is really a bigger problem: We're living in a post-national society in which for everyone the state is just utilitarian, a big insurance company. This is an extremely serious development.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Girls shoplifting for Christmas

Girls under age 15 in western Norway shoplift three times as much as their male counterparts according to new figures from Hordaland County police. The conclusion is based on three times as many girls under 15 being caught shoplifting compared to boys in the same age group, newspaper Bergens Tidende reports. Now with the Christmas shopping rush under way security guards and alert staff catch an average of one shoplifter per day at the Sartor shopping center in Bergen. "I think it may be connected with purchasing pressure. The girls see things they want, but don't have the money," Sartor director Mette Nora Sætre told the newspaper. The divisional leader of security firm Securitas, Kjell Inge Thorkildsen, said that nearly all of the youngsters caught react with shame, and he too blamed consumer pressure as the reason behind most of this type of shoplifting.

How do you tackle an invasion of giant jellyfish? Try making sushi

THEY are called echizen kurage and they sound like monsters from the trashier reaches of Japanese science fiction. They are 6ft wide and weigh 450lb (200kg), with countless poisonous tentacles, they have drifted across the void to terrorise the people of Japan. Vast armadas of the slimy horrors have cut off the country’s food supply. As soon as one is killed more appear to take its place. Finally, the quarrelsome governments of the region are banding together to unite against the enemy. Echizen kurage is not an extraterrestrial invader, but a giant jellyfish that is devastating the livelihoods of fishermen in the Sea of Japan. Nomura’s jellyfish, as it is known in English, is the biggest creature of its kind off Japan and for reasons that remain mysterious its numbers have surged in the past few months. The problem has become so serious that fishery officials from Japan, China and South Korea are to meet this month for a “jellyfish summit” to discuss strategies for dealing with the invasion. The problem first became obvious in the late summer when fishermen chasing anchovies, salmon and yellowtail began finding huge numbers of the jellyfish in their nets. Often the weight of the echizen kurage broke the nets or crushed the fish to death. Fishermen on the northern tip of Honshu, Japan’s main island, were forced to suspend work at the height of the lucrative salmon season. In some places jellyfish density is reported to be a hundred times higher than normal. Worst of all, no one yet understands why. In the meantime locals are making the best of it — rather than just complaining about jellyfish they are eating them. Jellyfish are an unusual ingredient of Japanese cuisine but are much more prized in China. Coastal communities are doing their best to promote jellyfish as a novelty food, sold dried and salted. Students in Obama have managed to turn them into tofu, and jellyfish collagen is reported to be beneficial to the skin.

Hobbits may be earliest Australians

THE tiny hobbit-like humans of Indonesia may have lived in Australia before they became extinct about 11,000 years ago. The startling claim comes from archaeologist Mike Morwood, leader of the team that in 2003 uncovered remains of the 1m-tall hominid at Liang Bua cave on Indonesia's Flores island. They believe the pint-size person - known officially as Homo floresiensis and unofficially as the "Hobbit" - was wiped out by a volcanic eruption that spared their Homo sapiens neighbours. Speaking at a public lecture in Perth, Professor Morwood from the University of New England in Armidale, NSW, raised the prospect that Hobbits colonised Australia before Aboriginal settlers arrived about 60,000 years go. He suggested that the Hobbits may have been pushed out by the bigger people, in part because their population was too small to compete. Professor Roberts said conditions during the north Australian wet season meant that small, ancient remains were unlikely to have survived. He noted that no early human remains have been unearthed in northern Australia and said that even the remains of the giant prehistoric animals, the mega-fauna, were scarce. There is also the troubling question of how the Hobbits would have travelled south from their Indonesian homeland. To date, there's no hard evidence they could sail or raft.

Samuel P. Huntington's now almost legendary essay about The Clash of Civilizations has generated a lot of discussion, and some justified criticism. Some would claim that there is no clash of civilizations, just a clash between a global, universal civilization and Islamic neo-barbarism. But Huntington does have some points. The West is still the leading civilization on the planet, but it is in decline. Both because we constitute an ever-shrinking part of global demography, and because we have lost confidence in our own culture. The beginning of the 21st century could perhaps be labelled "the retreat of the Western order", as the Islamic world is challenging us ideologically and China in particular is challenging us economically.

Let us debate the likelihood of a few different scenarios for the first half of the 21st century.

1. Another Atlantic/Western century

The intra-Western, Atlantic ties between Europe and North America will still be the most important and defining global axis. Although not impossible, this is probably not the most likely alternative at this point, given the economic and cultural weakness of Europe in particular.

2. Another American century

The USA, more than Europe and Asia, will continue to be the world's unchallenged superpower. The 21st century will be a continuation of the American Age that started in the 20th century.

3. The Asian/Chinese century

The world will return to the Asia-centric world we had before the rise of Europe and the West. Will this be a world dominated by China, or by Asia as a whole, including India? Will the rise of Asian economies trigger nationalistic rivalries and devastating intra-Asian wars such as WW1 in Europe, or will they cooperate peacefully?

4. The Pacific century

The USA may remain the world's leading power, but Europe fades off the global scene and leaves her spot open for Asia. Global affairs will be shaped by the twin pillars of the USA and East Asia, mainly China.

5. The Anglosphere - Indian century

I believe this is what has been predicted by Mark Steyn, among others. The USA and the UK, the major powers of the previous 3 centuries, will be at the centre of this one, too. But they will share the spot with India and maybe some other countries such as Japan, "honorary members" of the Anglosphere. This alliance will try to contain China, and will have hostile relations with the Islamic world.

6. The Islamic century - Neo-Barbarism and Chaos, the new Dark Ages

Islam manages to derail the West, both Europe and later North America. This disrupts global trade, and the ripples create chaos in other parts of the world, including East Asia. India will be drawn directly into the conflict with Islam, as will Russia and Israel.

In most of the above scenarios, I take it for granted that the USA will remain a major global player, and find it likely that Asia will increase its share of global BNP (although not necessarily to the point of dominance). The big question mark here is Europe. Will Europe become Eurabia, and be crushed by the other infidel powers? Will she slowly decline into third world status and irrelevance, or will she have the strength to expel Islam and forge a new beginning for herself, after generations of decline?